THE NYMS MYCOPHAGISTS TABLE

Forest Park Species List - 4/1/12

From Gary Lincoff:

About 30 people attended. More than 30 different mushrooms appeared.

An April Fool's Day joke - awaiting us at the meeting place for our Forest Park walk today was a cluster of very fresh mushrooms. Large fleshy mushrooms. Something we could hardly imagine after a month without rain. Still, there was a cluster of mushrooms - curiously at the base of the wooden standard that held the map of the park. It was a mushroom we rarely see in our area - a large, long-stemmed oyster-like mushroom. It's used to be called Pleurotus strigosus. It's a white mushroom with a strigose stem (having appressed hairs). It's now called Lentinus levis. It can't go on our Forest Park list because it's really from North Carolina, alas.

Nor can morels go on our list today. We didn't find even one morel, but someone on the walk told us he found two in Forest Park last year. So, there's hope.

Beginning Microscopy for the Amateur Mycologist

A few years ago, NYMS held a Beginners Microscopy Class. It was well attended; many of the participants now incorporate microscopy into their mushroom observations. While we do a little microscopy at our Monday Night meetings, time does not allow for a thoroughgoing exploration of these techniques.

We have decided therefore, to have another class to accommodate new members who have joined NYMS in the intervening years.

The sessions are scheduled for June-July when the Myxomycetes appear and the late spring fungi are fruiting. These will be the grist for our observations.

Visit GaryLincoff.com for a NYC Parks Species Report

To see a review of the 2011 NYC mushroom season, as seen by the New York Mycological Society on its 22 city walks, go to Garylincoff.com and click on "2011 NYMS NYC mushroom season" - unfinished, as yet, but progressing